The physics of torque tuning!

Howi

Member
I think this is one of those red herrings put about by top archers, those trying to get better are looking for the holy grail of any method that will improve their scores. Call me a cynic if you must, but chasing dreams like that only make things worse, your score gets worse and the only ones who benefit are those that advocating torque tuning because everyone else has b*****d up their bow and loosing points because of it. For me, I concentrate on getting the bow set up correctly so that everything is in alignment such that in conditions of no wind, whether I shoot at 20 yds or 100 yds they go in the middle ( if they don't, that is down to me!). If you are a top shooter then by all means try it, what have you to loose? But if two top archers cannot agree to its worth, that says it all for me. Sorry I cannot elaborate on the method to prove it one way or the other, I , personally would not waste my time, much better to keep trying to improve and maintain form. Too many archers are chasing the dream rather than concentrate on the essentials, just my view folks 😬
 

geoffretired

Supporter
Supporter
Howi, I agree with all you are saying about working on getting better rather than hoping some adjustments will make the improvements for you.
I think that in the case of torque tuning with the sight extension, if you are good enough you won't need it often. It might just help if it stops you losing a point in a close run battle.
 

Andy!

Active member
I think this is one of those red herrings put about by top archers, those trying to get better are looking for the holy grail of any method that will improve their scores. Call me a cynic if you must, but chasing dreams like that only make things worse, your score gets worse and the only ones who benefit are those that advocating torque tuning because everyone else has b*****d up their bow and loosing points because of it. For me, I concentrate on getting the bow set up correctly so that everything is in alignment such that in conditions of no wind, whether I shoot at 20 yds or 100 yds they go in the middle ( if they don't, that is down to me!). If you are a top shooter then by all means try it, what have you to loose? But if two top archers cannot agree to its worth, that says it all for me. Sorry I cannot elaborate on the method to prove it one way or the other, I , personally would not waste my time, much better to keep trying to improve and maintain form. Too many archers are chasing the dream rather than concentrate on the essentials, just my view folks 😬
Your view is absolutely wrong.
You're absolutely totally entitled to your wrong opinion too.
But putting it out there without me calling you out on it isn't really not going to happen..
The reason you can't elaborate is because you don't have the capacity to understand it, but you're happy to put this out for everyone to see.
There are few things you can do to actually make your bow less responsive to changes. Flat nock travel and torque tuning are two of them and are well known by anyone with half a clue.
If you can't get your bow torque tuned in less than 12 arrows with all the instructions out there on the internet, you're just purely incompetent, not cynical.
Hiding behind ignorance is one thing, but calling it a red herring on a public forum is another. Please leave your post here so that you can be embarrassed about it later.
 

geoffretired

Supporter
Supporter
Andy! that is one of your many epic posts. I love the last paragraph. Might feel different if I was the recipient, though.
 

Howi

Member
No! Not embarrassed at all, when all the top archers are doing it AND proving it works. I will contemplate changing my mind. Until then...... I have no reason to delete the post , I stand by what I said, just because you don't agree, doesn' t mean your right. Everyone is entitled to a view and to express it without abuse, perhaps something to consider, unless you are always right of course. No hard feelings on my part, have a nice day 😁
 

Andy!

Active member
Like I said, you're entitled to your wrong and easily proven wrong view. Just because you can't follow directions or understand basic relationships isn't my problem. You'll probably never know exactly what all the top archers are doing because you're never going to be one of them. If you can't understand and assimilate knowledge that was demonstrated to be correct almost twenty years ago, you'll never be at the leading edge of scores, technique or training.
Remember to cry abuse each time you get disagreed with. That always helps prove your ability to assess reality, not that it was in question.
 

Howi

Member
oh! dear! you sound like an angry young man. what a shame!
perhaps anger management classes, yoga or tai chi might help.
Most mature adults would just disagree with me and leave it at that.
 

Howi

Member
OH! Andy!, Andy!, Andy!
I new you would not be able to resist........
the last line in my last post just proved what the first line of the post said :LOL:
over and out.
Bye, Bye, I am getting bored now........, Life is too short to worry about snowflakes.
 

Andy!

Active member
It's nice that you're attempting to understand evidence at least when it seems to suit your purposes, but you've already demonstrated that 18 years of other people being correct about stuff hasn't been enough for you. It's a bit late to start trying to use logic now.
Just stay "bye bye" and it will be less embarrassing in future.
 

Howi

Member
Now that the spat has died down, I have decided to return to this thread.
The Physics of torque tuning!
So far no one has come up with a scientific proof/reason behind torque tuning, to prove how/why it is supposed to work.
So! I went a hunting on the web to see if anyone else had a more scientific approach that would allow one to analyse ones setup to see if it needed torque tuning, or whether torque tuning was the means to the wrong end. Let me explain:-
There are lots of videos/information about how to torque tune, However, and here is the rub, non of them are particularly consistent.
The basic principle seems to be that you can use the sight or rest or both to obtain this magical positioning that allows an archer to torque the bow almost to the point of derailment in the knowledge that the arrow will still hit the centre.
A lot of talk on archery forums suggest that the rest need to move back anything from 1 to 2.5 inches BACK from the nominal vertical bow centre at the deepest part of the grip.
Now I can see the logic of this to some degree, as this would be at the wrist joint as that is how you are torquing the bow to get it to move left or right.
There are others that show the rest needs to go forwards towards the bow centre (grip).
I cannot find any explanation why there is so much difference.
Now, just for a moment let’s get back to basics bow setup.
ALL, and I mean all, Compound bow setup instructions say to set up the arrow rest such that the point where the arrow contacts the rest should be on or near to the point on the grip which is furthest from the string (where you would measure brace height from).
This correlates to the information above that moving the rest nearer to the centre of the riser seems to be best.
That is where I would naturally set be arrow rest anyway, but, there are arrow rest extensions, arrow rest with large amounts of adjustment, usually backwards, available, are these for archers with long draw lengths to allow shorter arrows and therefore increasing spine?
These are being touted the solution for torque tuning if you cannot move your existing rest far enough.
So! confusion still reigns.
I have just been shooting in my back garden, I have been trying to get an hour a day, weather permitting, while in lockdown. So I thought, ok, let’s give it a go and see what happens with this torque tuning lark.
I shot 4 groups of three arrows, torque left, no torque, torque right.
I torqued my bow to put the weight on the end of the long rod 3 inches either side of neutral.
And the result……..
…………
…………
…………
nothing, they all hit centre or near enough to account for normal small variation.
Now I have to say, I was forcibly having to twist the bow to get it to move left and right, something that would not/could not, happen normally. I have a relaxed open hand position on the bow grip and there is NO WAY I could torque the bow any where near the amount I did without physically gripping the bow and twisting it. My bow grip positions itself between the joint of my thumb and my lifeline.
If I cannot torque the bow with this grip style/position what is the point of toque tuning?
It may be that I already have hit the sweet spot with my sight position and rest position, just by shear luck or is it by other tuning methods that render toque tuning redundant?
I don’t know, do you?
My method of setup/tuning revolves around the following method:-
set arrow rest as near to bow centre (deepest part of grip), position blade so that arrow runs through both berger button holes (if you have two), this with setting the arrow nocking point so that the arrow will be at 90 deg to the string and going through both berger button holes.
Next I set up centre shot, there are more ways to do this than skinning a cat. Note to all cat lovers me included, no animals were harmed in the setup process.
My method is to get the bow in a vice or somehow positioned so that I can attach an arrow to the top and bottom cams, pointing forwards to the front. With an arrow nocked and on the rest, the rest is adjusted left or right to get the nocked arrow to line up with the arrows on the cams.
Note :- you MUST use parallel sided arrows.
This gets you very close to the static centre of force that the bow will impart via the string to the arrow. To setup to the dynamic centre, which is the shooting centre (they may not be the same!)
I use the “French Tune” method to finalise this setting.
shoot at short range adjust sight to get arrow in middle, move out as far as you can and adjust arrow rest (not the sight), go back to short distance and adjust sight. repeat until you can go from the shortest distance to the longest without moving your sight (under little or no wind obviously!).
That is my basic bow setup.
Now where do we go from here, paper tune, tiller tune, torque tune, bare shaft tune, nock tune and half a dozen other methods of tuning?
Once you have got the basic tune done, everything else should be about tuning the archer in my book. So many seem to want to believe they have perfect form so it must be down to the bow. arrows, release aid, weather, paper tune, nock tune etc, PMT, anything but the archer. How many archers do you know who will spend inordinate amounts of money on equipment rather than spend time sorting themselves out which costs nothing but takes effort.

Going back to my torque tune results, have I accidentally dropped on the perfect torque tune with my choice of arrow rest position and sight position?
My sight is positioned to give a good sight picture while allowing me to cover 20 yds to 100 yds without my fletchings hitting the scope at 100 yds (I shoot 50lb max).
having just measured it at about 8 inches from throat of grip to flo pin in sight.
I noticed from the pictures in Mr Parks book, that he shows the sight fully in to the riser and getting left right issues under torque tuning, to moving the sight to about 7 inches, which is about the maximum on that particular sight, most sight bars are a good bit longer.
My question is, why would you have the sight set so close to the riser in the first place.
Move it out as far as possible whilst enabling reasonable sight tape length to cover up to 100yds.
Now! back to torque tuning, do we really need to tune out something that should never happen?
I’m blowed if I know, but my gut instinct says NO! and as my test tune showed me, it is of no value, as the “tune” is already covered by my existing setup, whether by design or accident.
It would be nice if someone could explain the real science of torque tuning preferably with diagrams explains what is happening and why.

When you get a respected archer like Rio Wild who says he saw no benefit (like me! but I am not putting myself anywhere near his ability [I wish!]), then I do have to wonder what other top archers are getting out of torque tuning, bearing in mind THEY should not be torquing their bows anywhere near the extent to need to tune it out. There are lots of other reasons why an arrow gets thrown left or right other than torque.

Until someone comes up with the science of what and why it does what it does, I go back to my original view, despite the fact, as has been mentioned, torque tuning has been around a long time, as have most of the other tune methods, doesn’t make it right.

Just my five cents worth, Andy! might still believe torque tuning is the holy grail of archery, and how dare I voice my negative opinion when everyone else is so obviously right.
Obviously I am such a p*** poor archer who will never get anywhere because I am too stupid/ignorant to know any better, well! such is life……….

end if rant

Intelligent discussion is welcomed

Just to get you started:- why don’t recurve archers need to torque tune, as they are more likely to torque the bow than a compound, due to the much bigger/wider grips on recurves?
 

geoffretired

Supporter
Supporter
Recurve archers are far less likely to torque their bows than compound archers.
For two main reasons; the position of the limb tips at full draw( viewed from directly above) and the holding weight of the bow at full draw.
View a recurve from directly above and torque the bow. The view from above will show the limb tips hardly move, because the tension on the string and on the limb tips is very high compared to the low holding weight of a compound.
If you imagine torquing both bow types by the same number of degrees,( say 5 deg for now) The short compound limb tip will move to one side by a much shorter distance than the recurve limb tip. The amount of side to side movement determines how easy or hard it is the torque the bow.
 

Andy!

Active member
(snip)

Until someone comes up with the science of what and why it does what it does, I go back to my original view, despite the fact, as has been mentioned, torque tuning has been around a long time, as have most of the other tune methods, doesn’t make it right.

Just my five cents worth, Andy! might still believe torque tuning is the holy grail of archery, and how dare I voice my negative opinion when everyone else is so obviously right.
Obviously I am such a p*** poor archer who will never get anywhere because I am too stupid/ignorant to know any better, well! such is life……….

end if rant

Intelligent discussion is welcomed

Just to get you started:- why don’t recurve archers need to torque tune, as they are more likely to torque the bow than a compound, due to the much bigger/wider grips on recurves?



The science of what and why it happens is quite simple and has been explained endless times in the last decade across every major archery forum in the world, in multiple languages, including English, Korean, French and Malaysian.
It's not my fault you're a stupid ignorant archer and there's not much I can do about it. At least you're happy to admit it, which is something.
Using that excuse that you don't understand it is the same technique that antivaxxers and Covid deniers adopt.
With a bit of luck, your attitude extends through all aspects of your life. Maybe you could do some more cutting edge research on Covid from highly populated hotspots and benefit all of mankind?

The holy grail of archery is absolute consistency, as is all other activity involving accuracy.
Torque tuning is a method used to minimise the effects of technique variation and there are several videos other than mine on the internet that demonstrate that it works. Mind you, if you choose to pick the couple of well known archers who haven't found it effective and ignore ones of the same level who do like Jesse Broadwater, that's called "cherry picking" It's a logical fallacy used by conspiracy theorists in arguments on the internet. It fools some people, but only the dumb ones, so that really doesn't matter at all.

Recurve archers do need to be aware of torquing as it affects their arrow flight as well and considerable attention to technique is paid by those recurve archers who are at the top of their game.

The geometry of recurves and the anti torque effect of long moment arms largely counter what low holding weights of compounds encounter, however the typical lengths of recurve sight extensions are not long enough to cover the compensation geometry required.

Someone who was observant enough, or well connected with the science based advances in archery to a good level, might know of the special requests made to Shibuya and Sureloc for longer recurve sight extensions.
If you knew what to look for, you might even spot them at the World Championships and at the Olympics.

If you don't understand it and it doesn't work for you, that's fine. I would encourage you to not use it. I'd also encourage you to use straight fletching and don't be that picky about the straightness of your arrows or the concentricity of your nock to arrow fit. Maybe ignore nock fit consistency while you're at it. Totally ignore flat nock travel. That's for beginners. Don't bother with arrow point profiles or arrow shape optimisation. Drag reduction is for pussies who can't deal with arrow drift like real men. Ignore any requirement for precision bow levelling. The fact that there's a linear relationship between level and sideways deflection is something only people looking for excuses for not winning ever use.
Cross yourself when anyone ever talks about dloop string torque and refuse to watch any videos that demonstrate how it disturbs sight alignment.
Nothing that obvious should ever be trusted. Make sure you pull your string into heaps of face contact too. Particularly if you have a beard because looking cool is worth extra points.

There's SO much for you to be ignorant of. Why limit yourself to just one thing you don't understand when there's so much else?
 

geoffretired

Supporter
Supporter
I think Howi, has a few ideas in his head that seem to conflict with each other; the arrow rest position relative to the throat of the grip being one of them. Some say move it forward some say move it back. That idea introduces a side to side movement of the arrow when the bow is torqued; a movement that will not be there if the arrow rest is above the throat. With the rest forward of the throat, the sideways arrow movement will be in the same direction as the sideways sight movement. To compensate for that, the sight extension will need to be greater than a rest that was directly above the throat. They are connected; because sight and arrow movement are connected. If the sight was inside the bow as used to be the case, the sight would move in the opposite direct to that of a forward extension. The arrow would be pointed to the opposite side from the gold and need the opposite method of compensation.
 

KidCurry

Well-known member
AIUK Saviour
I wish people could post their thoughts, bollocks or not without being riddiculed, but I guess forums just arn't like that for some reason.
Anyway, I used to shoot 2x PSE supras. They were set up identical. I had always shot at 3/4 sight extension to reduce vibration issues, this goes back years to when sights used to fall off :). The rest was 1/4" behind the beger button. Paper tune showed no torque issues as did shooting.
I bought a Hoyt podium to do a comparison as I liked the look of them. The same set up showed torque issues. To put it in context my PSE with small amount of torque would still be in the ten ring at 50m. The Podium would pop them out to the nine. I'm talking the difference between a 345 and 350 at 50m. I adjusted the sight and rest position of the Podium and removed the torque issue but with 1/8" rest adjustment and slightly longer sight position.
I adjusted the PSE to match the Podium and the torque issue appeared and worse than the Podium. Conclusions... the
1. Podium was less suceptable to torque issues than the PSE probably due to the longer ATA.
2. My default setting of the PSE was almost spot on for removing any torque issues.
I'm talking small torque amounts here. Just enough to feel with your bow hand. But also just a few points at 50m, just enough to make the adjustment and effort worth while. And if I had never bought a Podium I probably would never bothered with torque tuning.
 
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geoffretired

Supporter
Supporter
I would think that change the bow and you change the settings for all sorts of items. The bow has its own power stroke, which might be similar if looked at via a graph of weight against drawn length. But the dynamics involved could be quite different.
I would expect the same bow to require a different set up fora different archer even if draw length remains unaltered.
 
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